@Athenenoctua J’ai retrouvé le texte de la lettre de Louise Brooks à Guido Crepax, d’abord ici, puis, par archive.org, publiée dans un livre.

January 7, 1976

Dear Guido,

Thanks for the beautiful book and the comic strips. (But you didn’t tell me what that hyper-active slipper in the book meant).

I send you Image with the photo from the Dixie Dugan comic strip because it illustrates a unique fact. So far as I know no American actress has been the inspiration for one strip, and certainly never for two strips. Also John Striebel drew the syndicated Dixie from 1926 till 1966. And you began Valentina in 1965, just as if you were picking me up where John left off when he died.

Could Valentina be the lost Louise Brooks? Dixie Dugan was not. She was clever and intelligent and always knew how to take care of herself in a world she understood perfectly.

Ortega Y Gasset wrote that “We are all lost”, it is only when we confess it that we find ourselves and live true. But I knew I was lost when I was a little girl and my mother could not understand why I wept alone. Making films in New York was alright because I learned so much and discovered Tolstoj and Anna Karenina. Then I was sent to Hollywood in 1927 to make films. Nobody could understand why I hated that terrible destructive place which seemed a marvelous paradise to all others. “What’s the matter with you, Louise? You’ve got everything! What do you want?”. To me it was like a terrible dream I have — I am lost in the corridors of a big hotel and I cannot find my room. People walk past me as of they can not see or hear me. So I first ran away from Hollywood and I have been running away ever since. And now at 69 I have given up hope of ever finding myself. My life has been nothing.

But looking back, there was one time in Paris in 1929, when I was filming Prix de beauté and lived at peace with myself. I think that was because I did not speak French. Being lost was perfectly natural among those people with whom I could exchange no thoughts and feelings.

What does Valentina have to say to all this?

Love

Louise

Remember when the prodigal son returned the father said, “He was lost, and is found”. It was the father who found the lost son. Somehow I have missed being found.

#LouiseBrooks #GuidoCrepax #Letter